Reviews

Falling Down is a gritty look at the granular realities of modern life. William Foster's trek across L.A. shows us a non-homogeneous look at the city. Douglas's Foster is an anti-hero. You root for him but can't quite ignore the danger of his break. His pathetic life becomes superimposed on other people's pathetic little lives, any of which probably strike too close to home for many viewers. You may identify with at least one of the characters way too much to be comfortable for you. Robert Duvall does some of his best work as Detective Prendergast who has to deal with his burden of boorish co-workers and shrewish wife (played very well by Tuesday Weld). Rachel Ticotin is Prendergast's partner, Detective Sandra (that's it, no last name), who is the kind of co-worker we all wish we could have. (An aside here, Ticotin is one of those actors who doesn't come to mind when you think of the great ones, but look at her work. It is always good, maybe so good that she becomes lost in the character instead of maintaining her own identity. Isn't that the mark of a great actor?) Falling Down is a bittersweet look at the end of one man's life attended by people with similar lives who handled their challenges differently.

This is 40 is a funny movie that left me depressed. The dialog is witty but the characters have so many flaws that I couldn't like any of them. A general current of neurosis ran through the film. Think of any indie film where a family is drawn back together for some holiday or event. The whole film is an inexorable expose' of the characters' shortcomings that grows tedious despite the liberal salting of clever (sometimes mocking) dialog. I kept hoping that it would end soon because it didn't seem to have an arc to it; it just kept droning on. I think that a beer–maybe two–would have helped. This is 40 is a rom-com of the subspecies for long-married couples. Sort of. It follows the standard structure of general unhappiness followed by a display of loyalty and love coupled with a life-affirming epiphany. Sort of. I thought things were going to continue on just as they had been going after a very brief respite.

Watch This is 40 for the dialog. It was tight. Melissa McCarthy makes a brief, profanity laden appearance. With her, the profanity is a given and only the time on screen varies. Hint: salt is a nice spice in moderation. Too much can ruin the dish. Her dialog is sailor grade. Maybe pimp grade. Maybe even up to eighth-grade boy levels. The laughter evoked starts out well but ends up as nervous laughter as it goes on a bit too long. The two daughters of director Apatow and female lead Mann appear as the daughters. The older daughter does a convincing portrayal of an emotion-fueled adolescent. The younger daughter relied on precociousness for her persona and had a few good quips. They were the only characters that I found likable. Maybe Megan Fox's character wasn't too messed up.

I gave Eagle Eye a six;it probably should have been a five, but it raises issues that need to be looked at again today. I watched EE five years ago when it was in theaters. I was not especially impressed then. I rewatched it now because of its theme of overreaching government surveillance. EE now seems a bit naive. It proposes that a federal supercomputer runs amok and takes control of people's lives through its intimate knowledge of everything they do. Substitute an overreaching executive branch operating through the paranoia kings in the national security infrastructure for the insane supercomputer and you can see that Eagle Eye is still relevant today.

Relevant, but exhausting. The pace is that of a meth-addicted Jack Russell Terrier... Terrierist. The pace left me numb and unable to see all the plot holes. Saw many, but not all of them. The action and visuals are stimulating though.

Shia LaBeouf is Shia LaBeouf. Michelle Monaghan and Rosario Dawson do capable jobs in their roles and are always a delight to watch. Billy Bob Thorton is Billy Bob Thorton. Michael Chiklis does a good job in his role as a cabinet secretary.

Eagle Eye will hold your attention unless your as ADHD as it is.

Reservoir Dogs was a pretty conventional buddies-in-crime movie that became noteworthy for its level of violence. Tarantino got himself under control for his sophomore movie, Pulp Fiction--one of my favorites. Pulp Fiction was violent, no doubt, but it was held together by well-developed, interesting characters and dialog. With the exception of the pawn shop crew, you had some level of empathy for all the major characters.

Tarantino became much admired after these two movies and seems to have become lazy and dependent on shocking viewers. He reminds me of the creature in John Carpenter's The Thing. He watches other works and stores snippets away until he can assemble them into something different yet reminiscent of the other works. The extended conversations involving DiCaprio and Waltz kept bringing to mind the plantation scene from Apocalypse Now Redux. Waltz's accent and quite a few references to the German language kept me thinking about Inglourious Basterds. Couple the accents with the lack of emotion as Waltz pursues his bounties, and I was thinking Schindler's List. Long panoramic shots with soaring swells of music brings to mind every spaghetti western. Put all these snippets together and you have a contemporary Tarantino movie. Django lacked smoothness; it seemed a choppy agglomeration of...snippets.

Django is full of anachronisms. The count on this site is 22 plus three factual errors. Though many people rely on Hollywood to school them in history, I don't expect non-historical, fictional films to be 100% accurate, but it seems like Tarantino had a complete disregard for accuracy. Was this laziness by Tarantino or a deliberate disregard for accuracy in favor of being cool? The characters in Django were one-dimensional. Waltz's dentist was mysterious as to his back story and motivations, and Jackson's Stephen was interesting for his devotion and dismissive behavior toward his "owner." (No person can own another, but very often damn sure act like it.) In fact, Stephen's dismissive attitude was unbelievable given DiCaprio's Candies' general intolerance. I think that the attitude was allowed/incorporated to protect the Samuel L. Jackson image as an eternal bad-ass. Everyone else was explicitly good or evil. No shades of grey here. And speaking of shades of grey, there seemed to be a lot of images of women being dominated, whipped, and bound. Shades of misogyny? Rumor has it that $10 million of the $100 million budget was spent on prop blood and fire hoses from which to shoot it. More stylized Hollywood violence for the motive of revenge. Any wonder that people think that the way to right every wrong is obliterate someone? The violence level in Django compared to the general level of movie violence is the difference between pornography and erotica. Perhaps Tarantino's Thing incorporates a snippet from This is Spinal Tap by putting an 11 on his violence amp. Make that a 12. Okay, let's assume that killing three dozen people in a scene is necessary to tell the story. Do we also have to see geysers of blood with every shot? Too much of anything is desensitizing and dilutive.

The cast did a good job with their shallow characters. Waltz and DiCaprio stood out from the rest. Foxx, strangely enough, seemed to blend into the background in scenes involving Waltz and DiCaprio. Washington seemed to be a prop, a token as the boys played "no, **** you." You probably won't hate Django, but you likely won't be very satisfied unless you drank the Tarantino Kool-Aid. I'd love to see something from him again that is the caliber of Pulp Fiction.